For that work we have strong lads enough and true. Above all we must make no mistake when we strike, for if he scents our suspicions of him he'll whisk them off to Spain before you could bat your eye."
I listened to him intently, yet enjoying to the utmost my prospective triumph. He went on:
"Then there is that other fellow; we don't know who he is, the one that came over with you. He will probably exchange dispatches with Yvard, then off to the colonies again. There is not so much trouble about him, for he can be captured aboard ship. It is Yvard we want, and his dispatches."
I said very quietly, still looking into the fire:
"That much is already done."
Jerome raised up on his elbow and stared at me as if he thought me mad.
"I have taken those dispatches from your friend. Here they are."
"The devil you have," he cried out, reaching the middle of the floor at a single bound. "How and when?"
He would not leave off until I had related the whole of my adventure beginning with meeting the girl, and ending when I found him, at the inn. He was as happy as a school-boy, and laughed heartily at my being so readily made a victim of by the girl Florine.
"Such tender doves to pluck she does not often find, and I warrant you she lets not many go so easily."
I thought it unnecessary to tell him of my encounter
